The superstorm Sandy has claimed the life of five in West Virginia, including a legislative candidate struck by a falling tree limb, and left hundreds of thousands without power Wednesday. Sandy brought heavy snow, dumped on the mountains, snapping trees like toothpicks, pulling down power lines and collapsing homes.
The long, arduous task of digging out has began for many people. But thousands in remote, rural areas remained cut off, their land-line phones out of service and their roads rendered impassible.
Republican House of Delegates candidate John Rose Sr., 60, was checking fences on his 100-acre deer farm near Philippi when a falling tree limb struck him Tuesday afternoon, his son George Rose told The Associated Press.
"It was a big limb," the younger man said. "I don't even think he knew it hit him."
George Rose said his father was with his wife when their all-terrain vehicle became stuck. She had begun walking away as he tried backing it up, Rose said.
"She heard the limb break, but she had already walked a little ways. She didn't think anything of it, and didn't realize that anything was wrong. But then she saw he wasn't coming," the younger Rose said.
Lt. Phil Ferguson, a Barbour County sheriff's deputy and lifelong friend of the Rose family, said tree limbs nearly took out a sheriff's cruiser, too. Shortly after he moved it while clearing roads, four fell where it had been sitting.
"It could happen to any of us," he said. "It's bad out there."
John Rose was running in the House's 47th District. He had previously appeared at the Legislature as an advocate of deer farms, where captive herds are bred for hunting, as livestock and for commercial products.
"The whole county knew him," George Rose said. "He got a lot of other deer farmers started."
His name will remain on the ballot but there will be a special write-in period.
